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MY DYING BRIDE ‘Trinity’ Peaceville (1995/2004)
Of all My Dying Bride releases, "Trinity" has to be one of the most difficult to review. I guess it has to do with the fact that this collection of nine songs, eleven if you also count the two bonus tracks on the 2004 digipack re-issue, covers a five year period, during which most of the major decisions and changes took place for the Yorkshire outfit. It was originally with great hesitation that I began re-introducing myself to the eleven featured compositions, but it wasn't long before I realised that my task would be far less difficult than I originally expected.
My Dying Bride have recorded quite a few EPs in their career, most of which were limited copies. As the band's popularity started to grow through the years, so did the demand for these specific releases. What "Trinity" managed to do was to give the opportunity to the younger audience to get its hands on these songs and allow them to have a better understanding about not only the band's origins, but also their evolution through the years. Let's take things from the very beginning, though.
The first three tracks of the album were originally featured in the 1992 EP release "Symphonaire Infernus Et Spera Empyrium". Since both "God Is Alone" and "De Sade Soliloquay" are typical examples of traditional Death Metal with plenty of influences from bands like Morbid Angel and Death, it was up to the same-titled "Symphonaire Infernus Et Spera Empyrium" to capture the attention of the unsuspecting underground Metal scene. The extensive use of violin, combined with rhythmical heavy guitar riffs, Aaron's unique brutal screams and a continuous change in the song's tempo manage to achieve exactly that thing. The beginning of a new era for extreme metal music!
Next in line are the three compositions from the 1993 EP "The Thrash of Naked Limbs", the first of which is the same-titled composition. The first thing that you will notice while listening to this six minute classic is the great progress that this band made, both in terms of song-writing and sound quality in less than a year. Up to this day, "The Thrash of Naked Limbs" is considered to be one of the many My Dying Bride classics that are still the obvious choice for live performances. "Le Cerf Malade" is the best candidate for a soundtrack in any epic/horror film, and I admit that I was quite recently thinking how appropriate this song would be in a movie like The Lord of The Rings - especially the part when the fellowship enters the mines of Moria! Finally, "Gather Me Up Forever" is the only straight-forward Doom/Death metal composition which, even though it doesn't feature any violin or keyboard themes, moves in a similar musical direction as the two previously-mentioned tracks.
The last three songs of the original "Trinity" release are supposed to be the ones taken from the 1994 EP release "I Am The Bloody Earth", but for some strange reason, that is only partly the case. Apart from the quite spectacular doomy same-titled composition and a very successful re-mix of the "Crown Of Sympathy"(originally taken from the album "Turn Loose The Swans), this compilation does not include "Transcending (Into The Exquisite) as one would expect, but "The Sexuality Of The Bereavement" which belongs on the band's third full-length release "The Angel And The Dark River" (1995). That, of course, is not a problem, since this is another brilliant My Dying Bride composition that blends quite successfully with both the songs from that release.
I believe that there are many good reasons why "Trinity" must not be treated as any ordinary collection, but the most important of all is that, with the exception of "The Sexuality of Bereavement", none of the remaining eight compositions can be found in any of the band's studio albums, nor in the two Meisterwerk compilations which were released in the beginning of the new millennium. Plus, if you decide to go for the 2004 re-issue, you will also get two bonus tracks, "Vast Choirs" (taken from the band's debut album "As The Flower Withers") and "Catching Feathers", which is one of the first ever My Dying Bride compositions (featured in 1990's demo "Towards The Sinister). If you are a devout My Dying Bride fan, there is no excuse for not having “Trinity” in your collection, but don’t think even for a minute that this release is only suitable for the already converted.
****
Review by John Stefanis
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